Drops of Lethe
by Laryna6
Summary: Angelic Days manga. Gendo wishes he knew who to thank for bringing him and Yui together. Because something is wiping everyone's memories of that person. That would be worrying even if that person hadn't warned them of a threat to human survival, to Yui's survival. Now if only he and Yui could remember the details...
1. Chapter 1

_A very belated giftfic for dearlyanonymous and shlliterarygirl of tumblr. I had a couple different ideas for a fic based on this particular manga: one of them was a cracky twisted fairy tale, the other was an explanation of what the heck was going on. This ended up being a more serious take on what I'd intended to use for the cracky twisted fairy tale premise._

_The Angelic Days manga is loosely based on one of the Eva spinoff/AU video games: there are six volumes, all published in English. _

_The best way to describe it is that the manga's author vehemently hates Shinji/Asuka, and thinks that they are completely wrong for each other. The way they make this known is by having Shinji be Strangled By The Red String with someone who is completely unlike canon!Asuka in every way. 'This person is Shinji's type!' 'Shinji is meant to be with' … someone who bears no resemblance to Asuka. Clearly, in their mind, Shinji's type is the complete opposite of Asuka. Just to make this even more clear to the reader, Rei, Kaworu and Kensuke are all used to restate that the author's preferred pairing of Shinji/absolutelynot!Asuka is absolutely inevitable and there's no way for anyone with an actual personality, eg. the real Asuka, to possibly compete with it. _

_One of the other ways the manga differs from the videogame is that it spends a heck of a lot of time establishing that there's something very weird going on with Kaworu, and never explains any of it. After reading the manga, I thought 'well, this is based on a videogame, so presumably the author never got around to explaining what the heck was going on because they assumed readers would know from playing the videogame,' but nope. The videogame doesn't have anything similar at all. The author made all that up and didn't explain it because that would have used up pagecount that could have gone to the shipping. _

_Kaworu is connected to Adam somehow, and is cursed to be forgotten. He's not happy about it, so it's clearly not something he's doing on purpose. Records of him exist, but once people start forgetting about him, they'll stop noticing those records._

_He's the one who warned Gendo and Yui to prepare for the threat of the angels. _Haruhi Suzumiya _seems to be an influence: Adam's power will let people destroy this world and create a new one the way they want it. Probably the angels are trying to reach Adam to create their new world and replace that of the Lilim, like in the series. _

_Since _Gendo, _of all people, is given the opportunity to choose whether or not to wipe the world clean and start over, Kaworu's actions in volume 5 mostly boil down to trying to arrange a reason for Gendo to think that the world doesn't suck and he shouldn't let seven billion people die. The reason Gendo will do anything is, of course, Yui, so since Angelic Days is a spinoff more focused on romance, the only way for Kaworu to save the world is to set those two up. Yeah. _

_Of course, this is like the one 'verse where Gendo is not actually a jerk to anyone whose name is not Yui. Shinji resents him because Gendo doesn't spend a lot of time with him, but that's because this Gendo _actually cares whether Shinji lives or dies_ (what a weird AU this is...)._

* * *

Once upon a time, there were two young geniuses (not that they had realized yet that this was what they were) who were rather confused over what exactly had just happened.

Yui could remember something about the color white, a white void, if she poked at where the absent memories should be, but she wasn't entirely sure that wasn't some sort of metaphor for the void itself. Something, had taken an eraser to extremely important parts of the last week, and all she could really remember was white, and urgency, and the determination to hold on to Gendo.

Gendo knew absolutely that he wanted to protect Yui. That her existence made this world worthwhile. He also knew that before this last week, he'd thought the world was absolutely worthless, and that _someone _had made him realize that Yui was such a wonderful person. Someone had made Yui find him, reach out to him, let him realize how precious she was: someone had made the world change from an empty, worthless void to the place with Yui in it, the place that had brought forth Yui. Someone had made him realize that this world was worth protecting.

And left them a message that the world needed protecting. Directions to a shrine in the forest behind the town, to a great cave where they found…

A week ago, he wouldn't have had any interest at all in trying to become some kind of hero that would save the world or anything ridiculous like that. He wouldn't have cared about what they found, about the legends he'd dug up in the town's archives (Yui was the one who was polite enough to get them in, he was the one who was good enough at interpreting poetry to try to make sense of any of it) about giants that could only be fought by children.

He was holding Yui's hand. She was letting him hold her hand, and that was why his grip was white-knuckled, why he was glad that he'd got in all those stupid fights, because now he had someone he couldn't bear to lose.

Someone who was gripping his hand just as tightly, here in the little town museum's dimly-lit back room.

He should be looking at the book spread out on the table, because there were paragraphs, entire _pages_ that his mind slid away from the way he couldn't remember who it was that sat in that seat. The way neither he nor Yui could read that note anymore. No, they could read it, they just couldn't notice anything about it, couldn't capture it in their memories, and he dreaded the moment it would start to look like a blank piece of paper, when they wouldn't have any clues, any clues at all, to how to find the person who arranged all of this.

Who warned Gendo that Yui was important, that he couldn't lose her, that there was someone who would make life worth living. Who warned them that he needed to protect her, and he knew that if he said that, she'd be just as determined to protect him, the way her eyes met his right now, and he had to look down at his hand again (his hand with hers in it!), because it was so strange and embarrassing that she was looking so determined _for him_, so he knew that she wouldn't abandon him, that she wasn't afraid, being strong for him because he was afraid that he'd lose her, that he wouldn't be _good enough_. That he'd never see her again, just like his mom, not because she'd abandoned him but because she _wouldn't_, because she'd want to help him, she'd never abandon him, and she'd get hurt.

The way the class had left her to do all the weeding by herself, because she'd associated with him?

He was gripping her hand too tightly. Desperately. It hurt, a little, but Yui just put her other hand on top of his, because she didn't like to see Gendo so worried, so afraid, and she didn't want to see the kind of self-loathing that would try to swallow him up if he realized he was hurting her, just wanting to know he wasn't alone. "Do you think they were the town's god?" she wondered.

"What even is a God?" Gendo muttered. "How does whatever it is know to warn people?"

"You don't really think…"

"You've too naïve," Gendo said, ducking his eyes down again. They were narrow with the reflexive suspicion of someone that had been betrayed by the world too many times.

Still, "You don't really mean that," she knew.

"I owe them," Gendo said, after glancing up at her and then away again, embarrassed. "Maybe they were a god."

"Because it would take divine intervention for…" For me to like you? "I liked you before this happened. I just didn't… I wouldn't have worked up the courage. Not just you," she told him, before he assumed that she was just afraid of him, that he'd thought he would hurt her. "The class, and my parents… You're not the only one who knows that… I have someone I want to protect too, now."

Gendo's cheeks were as red as anything, and he really didn't know how to deal with someone liking him, did he? She wanted to help him learn, it hurt to see how unprepared he was for this and think about how lonely he was for so long.

Running. Running through the town, forcing herself through some wall separating her and Gendo, and "They weren't trying to stop me from reaching you. They wanted you to watch me come for you," she told him. "I don't think that anyone who wanted you to know that someone liked you," loved him, she almost said, but now she was the embarrassed one, the one who found herself a little overwhelmed by just how much she li-loved him. "Could possibly be a bad person."

"It was probably just so that I had someone to fight for," Gendo said, taking refuge in belligerence and suspicion again. "This is more important than me finding true love or something."

"We're looking at legends," Yui reminded him, "and you're refusing to believe that maybe someone wanted you to be happy? If they could have been the town god, then why not a fairy godmother?" Both of them were stories.

"There's always a price," Gendo said. "What?" he asked, a little alarmed when she suddenly looked depressed. What had he said this time?! Was he going to keep hurting her?

"Is it really so strange for people to just want you to be happy?" Yui wondered. "You don't think that I only want to be with you because of some other reason that isn't _you_, do you? You don't think that you _have _to protect me…"

"Of course I have to protect you!" Gendo winced at his outburst. "I mean," he said, looking away again, worried that he'd scared her. "You're different. I don't want a world without you. But, I guess… this is the world where I met you, so it's not all bad. And they're the reason I could really meet you." Not just an annoying classmate, but Yui. Not just another girl who didn't understand anything and wouldn't want to, but his…

"So," he said hurriedly. "I guess you're right, that they can't be all bad, but having to kill monsters makes sense." Even if it was possible for someone who wasn't special at all to deserve Yui, it would have to be after doing something heroic. Rescuing the princess.

She'd already rescued him, hadn't she? And she'd do it again. So if he rescued her, he had to do at least that much to make them even. How could he possibly do anything great enough to deserve her? No, how could he possibly thank someone enough for this? His soul couldn't possibly be worth _this _much, and why else would spirits help someone like him?

Maybe Yui was the future hero, he realized. Maybe rescuing him was practice for her, maybe he was supposed to be her reward, but he hated the idea. Not because he didn't think that Yui could be a hero, he could see it all too easily, but he was the one who should be in danger, not her. He was the one who had something to prove. If he was destined to be her princess, her trophy, then she deserved a much better prize than a stupid punk like him.

"You didn't promise them anything, did you?" he asked her, suddenly nervous, because even if _he _was no prize, Yui was.

She tilted her head to the side, thinking for a moment. "I know I promised to stay by your side, but I made that promise to you more than them, I think. I don't remember promising that, but I _know _I've made that promise," somewhere in what she couldn't clearly recall.

"We could have said anything and we wouldn't remember," Gendo knew. "I could have promised them my firstborn if they'd make you like me." Abandoned his future child the way his mother had abandoned him, so that the man she wanted would take her.

"You wouldn't," Yui said, because she had faith in him and thought he was being silly instead of serious.

"I wouldn't give _your _child away, but maybe if I didn't really take it seriously…" He wouldn't want Yui to be sad, but he hadn't really thought about it until now, that if Yui let him marry her that meant children and he'd mess up and not be the father Yui's children deserved, he just knew it.

He wasn't good enough for Yui, so why would she possibly… Just because she was a good person who wanted to help people and thought that he was someone who needed someone to be nice to them? He would have been annoyed by the pity, he thought he had been annoyed, in there somewhere, but if he got Yui out of it, then he could only be grateful.

Wait. "I can't remember their name," he realized. "They were…" an empty seat, and he wondered how long he'd be able to remember that the person was in their class, even that they'd looked human enough to blend in among students, or at least were able to make people think they looked like a child even though they couldn't possibly be one. "There's a story like that, where someone pretends to be able to do something useful, so it looks like they're worthy to marry royalty, but someone else does all the work, and they have to surrender their firstborn if they can't remember that person's name."

"I won't let them take your child," Yui told him, squeezing his hand. "I didn't let them take you."

He should have trusted her, should have relaxed at that, but it wasn't _his _child, it was Yui's child, and she'd be sad if she never saw that child again, unlike his mother, and he couldn't risk it. He didn't just have to defend Yui against the giants, but her child against something that no one could quite remember, so how could he defend against it, figure out how to fight it, if he couldn't think if what it was, what powers it might have, what weaknesses it might have?

How was he supposed to fight giants, for that matter? The remains of the living suits of enchanted armor in that cave, the ones that would only protect children: how were they supposed to repair any of them? How were they supposed to make adults listen to them about strange things like that, instead of taking them to some lab or taking Yui to some lab, because the two of them had contact with a spirit or an alien or who knew what?

And if this god or spirit was so powerful, and knew how wonderful Yui was, then why hadn't they wanted Yui for themselves?

...He hadn't really seriously thought that anyone would want his firstborn, just like no one (until Yui) had wanted his mother's. Children were a burden. But… if it was Yui's child, then they might take after Yui.

Someone had appeared, and faded away like a dream, just like their memories of that person, and what if… what if Yui wanting to do things with him, to be with him, to let him protect her was too closely tied to those memories? What if they'd lose it too? Unless he made other memories somehow, ones that weren't tied to that person, ones they _could _remember. Like exploring under the shrine, the moment when his flashlight stopped working because it had probably been years since his grandmother changed the batteries and he had to hold Yui's hand the rest of the way so they could both use hers to check the ground in front of them so they didn't fall down into any holes in the old tunnels.

So they didn't get separated. So he didn't wind up alone in the darkness.

At least in that white expanse, he hadn't been alone. Even before she came. As strange as that place was, he thought he might have stayed there. If it weren't for Yui... He wanted to protect Yui. He had to prepare for the attack of the angels.

What if whatever was tampering with their minds to make them forget, was trying to make them forget to prepare?


	2. Chapter 2

_A 'what-if' in the Angelic Days 'verse, going with the idea that Rei may have been made with mad science here too and that might have consequences…_

_Angelic Days!Rei is more like the Rei from the anime ending's instrumentality alternate universe, since Gendo isn't actually a bastard here and may not have had anything to do with her production, forget emotionally crippling her to try to make her not have her own personality when that would remind him that she was her own person, not his Yui blow-up doll. Rei minus Gendo, as the anime shows, is upbeat, extroverted, etc. Of course, her desire to interact with others is just going to make this even worse._

_Sometimes, when I'm in a bleak mood, I write bleak things._

_A lot of the things we remember are memories of memories: remembering something makes a new memory of that particular thing, and often when we try to recall that thing again, what we'll actually find is the memory of when we recalled that thing before, not the original memory. This is part of why human memories will get so distorted over time, often bearing little resemblance to what actually happened._

_AD has a lot of onesided pairings, since apparently it appeals to the author to have Rei in love with Shinji just so that Rei can say 'I can't possibly compete with not!Asuka, Shinji and anyonebut!Asuka are clearly meant to be together.' Yeah: ugh. It's entirely possible that the only reason Gendo and Yui get a volume to themselves is because the author has decided that Shinji and not!Asuka is a Generation Xerox of Gendo and Yui, even though even their portrayals of Gendo and Yui have nothing in common with Shinji or any version of canon!Asuka. Yeeeeeah. _

_As such, onesided Rei/Shinji, Kaworu/Shinji and Kensuke/Pod Person are all AD!canon. _

* * *

One morning, Rei Ayanami woke up and no one had any idea who on earth she was.

The facility's scanner still accepted her ID card, but holding it up and telling people "See? Of course I work here, see this?" didn't help: they'd never seen her before, and her insistence that they had just made her suspicious, made her get hauled into the main office and even though the system checked her out, they didn't see that she'd been here since forever, that she'd been _made _at this facility. Calling references noted in the file, calling _Ritsuko_, who she'd had lunch with just last week, didn't help.

She ended up in a cell, and then containment after they gave her a blood test, and when they saw she was related to the Evas she would have feared dissection (it was hard not to panic, _why was this happening)_ if she wasn't glumly certain that they'd forget all about it as they stopped actively thinking about her.

Before she started demanding answers, she'd had the same guard come up to her and say "What are you doing here?" as though they'd only just then noticed that there was someone her age with blue hair in the building, three times that morning.

"What are you doing here?" one of the doctors who worked in this section asked her the next morning, looking confused to see someone in one of the sterile rooms used for Eva parts.

"Someone brought me to visit and I got locked in?" Rei hazarded, managing a smile that was cheerful as well as rueful somehow.

"I'll let you out," the doctor said, looking far more concerned with how long it was going to take to properly sterilize that room so it would be usable again than the presence of a blue-haired girl with strangely pale skin, and how she could possibly have ended up staying overnight without anyone realizing in a lab like this. Under the watchful eyes of the security cameras.

The ones Rei glanced at nervously as the doctor let her out, but all the guards at the security stations barely noticed her presence.

At first, it was a good thing for them to get used to her, even though she looked strange and of course there were rumors that she was made in a lab. Then she was a heroic Eva pilot, and as she grew older, as the Eva started to ignore her, she became less and less important…

That was why she'd thought that this was a dream, a nightmare. The thought of people forgetting her, thinking she didn't matter anymore had been weighing on her mind, but this!

Thirty minutes later, standing in front of an ATM, her paycheck still wasn't in her account.

She had documentation, but unless this stopped, there was no way for her to renew it.

The _people who made her_ didn't know anything about her anymore, about who she was or what might be happening to her, but the Drs. Ikari, they were the first to discover that the angels were coming, the first to find the living armor she was made from. Even if they didn't remember her either, it wasn't like she had any other ideas.

It was impossible for her to get a meeting with Dr. Gendo Ikari, but everyone knew that Dr. Yui Ikari was the more accessible one.

* * *

"Thank you so much," Rei was saying three days later, when she finally made it to the lab. "Thank goodness you believe me… why do you believe me?" she realized. "I know it sounds absolutely insane." Was Shinji's mom just humoring the mad girl?

"Misato talked to us about someone we didn't remember, and I did look at an old copy of the pilot roster." Yui opened up the folder she'd spread out on the park table and slid a sheet across to Rei. "Is this your name here?"

"No." Rei blinked, startled, and peered down at it again. "My name is here," she said tentatively, growing more worried by the moment, "but this one… There's another pilot who's been forgotten? What about the others?" Would this happen to all of them? What about Shinji? Was she going to forget Shinji?

Was _Shinji's own mother_ going to forget him?

"So there really was another pilot," Yui said, looking relieved instead of as worried as Rei. "Gendo and I couldn't be sure, since it looked like we had at least one extra pilot… Of course, now it looks like we didn't have any extras." If you read the names on the current roster, or the ones that Yui could still read and understand on the old roster. "So they did come back to help us."

"Who?" asked Rei.

"The person who warned us that the angels were coming. Misato found his name in our class roster, but after I had time to talk to Gendo and we had time to investigate, she didn't know what we were talking about, and didn't see any familiar names in our class roster. I think that until someone's forgotten them once, they can see the records that people like Gendo and I, who have forgotten them, can't see. But that rules out everyone associated with the Eva project. It may even rule out most of the people in the world now, because everyone knows the names of the pilots. Knew."

"Angel," Rei realized, squinting at the name on the roster, even though her eyes were determined to ignore it, wouldn't focus on it. "It looks like part of it says angel. Messenger."

"Well, they did leave us a message," Yui said, smiling. "Would you like to see the box we put it in?"

"A box?" Rei asked, blinking red eyes.

"It was getting hard to see the piece of paper anymore," Yui explained, "so we were worried that we'd lose it. We gave it to Dr. Fuyutsuki and didn't tell him what it was, so he wouldn't have anything to forget. I'll ask him if he can bring it by our house tonight, if you'd like to… Oh! Do you have anywhere to stay?" she realized, looking worried.

"I don't really have a lot of money left," Rei said, embarrassed. "My paychecks stopped coming. Do you think your husband could maybe…"

Yui shook her head. "There's a lot of government oversight."

"That's probably why it got cut off so fast in the first place." Rei sighed. If only they'd forgotten to look over her name on the pay roster, instead of someone thinking 'I don't know this name, must be a mistake.'

"You should stay with us," Yui said. "We've had a lot of ideas for how to try to remember the person we met before, if it happened again. They didn't stay around either time, but having someone to practice with," Rei trying to remind them that she existed and had a reason to be in their guest room, "might help."

Rei should have hurried to thank her, it should have been an incredible relief because even if she didn't need to eat as much as most people and was a little tougher, she really wasn't looking forward to not having a roof over her head and where was she even going to get _any _food? Except.

Shinji wasn't going to remember her, was he?

Rei looked up when Yui put a hand on hers, to see the scientist looking at her sympathetically. "I wonder if they feel the same way," she said.

"They?" Oh, Rei realized. There was someone else. Someone _she'd _forgotten. Someone else who might not have been able to pay for the place they were staying, who might have had to abandon all their earthly possessions in another country… Or if this had happened to them before, maybe they had a plan for it by now. So it wouldn't be as bad for them, they'd know that everyone they knew was just going to forget about them…

A flash, a hint of anger, _how could you do that, how could you rub it in my face that you can do that and I can't, why did you have to make this even worse by reminding me that even the little I have right now is going to just _go away_, and how could you want that to happen even faster? "_I think they do," Rei said, and wondered.

"I don't think we even got to thank them, Gendo and I," Yui said regretfully. "We've been married for almost twenty years now, and I wouldn't have been able to make him realize that I loved him if it weren't for them."

Yui had to get back to work, so Rei started walking toward the Ikari house, for lack of anything better to do. She still remembered this town, the school, the place where she'd told Shinji that she liked him and been rejected (done it knowing that she'd be rejected), the concert… something about the concert… But then, there was so much here that filled her with sadness, with dimly remembered heartbreak, because this was where she'd had her first crush, her first rejection. That was how she and Ritsuko became friends… but they weren't friends anymore, not unless there was some way to fix this.

* * *

Shinji's mother was the first to get home, and Rei tried to fight down the panic when Yui looked at her without a hint of recognition. "Did you ask Dr. Fuyutsuki to get the box?" was what Rei asked, hoping that she had at least done that, that Yui asking herself why _had _she done that would make her believe Rei's story again.

A moment, and then Yui's face lit up. "Are you the…"

"No, I'm not the person from back then," said Rei. "Although you thought they were one of the pilots. Another pilot. I'm Rei Ayanami, one of the Eva pilots. I was made from the Evas, and everyone's forgotten about me. You were going to see if there was anything you could do, and if I could help you with the person that you've forgotten about?"

"Oh, that would be why I wanted my old teacher to get the box!" Yui realized, and smiled. "Why don't you come in, and we'll try to take notes. I don't know if that will help, because we recorded so much data about the pilots and it doesn't seem to be helping any more than all the journals in the town museum did, but if I leave things around, then maybe you can remind me of them and that will be evidence."

"Where's Shinji?" Rei asked some time later, after Yui had invited her in and told her to sit down and Rei had looked around and noticed that Yui hadn't called out to anyone to let them know he was home.

"He's at college," Yui told her. "He'll be home this weekend." She paused, holding the glass of water she'd poured herself. "So _that's _why I was trying to remember Shinji's school friends earlier!" she realized. "Are you the one from the music club?"

"I did play an instrument, but it was someone else that wanted him to come play at the concert… And I can't think of who!" So yes, that had to be them!

"I wonder if Shinji lost interest in music because he forgot the person he used to play with?" Yui wondered. "He hasn't touched his cello since… since the angel attacks ended. I'm fairly certain." Oh, yes. "Would you like some water, Rei?" she asked.

Rei nodded and accepted the glass. All that walking had made her thirsty.

It was Fuyutsuki who arrived next: Rei remembered Shinji complaining about how his dad was never home (at least he had one), even though it was usually someone else who got complained at. Someone else wasn't Touji, Kensuke or Hikari, so it had to be them! So, it was someone that Shinji confided in: maybe he would be able to tell them more!

"Before I forget," Yui told them after greeting her old teacher. "I'm going to call Kaji and Misato. They _were _investigating this during the angel attacks: maybe, if I remind them of that… Kaji is the kind of person who might have some good ideas."

"Good ideas about what?" Fuyutsuki asked, puzzled.

"Why we're forgetting Eva pilots as well as the person who warned us about the angels. Kozo, this is Rei Ayanami. She was an _artificially created _Eva pilot, and from what I managed to ask about before I forgot, everyone who worked on the project remembers it, and that there was a successful product, but they can't think of anything about that person."

"Like…" Kozo looked her over piercingly. "So that's why you had me bring the document box. If we have a sample… Excuse me," he apologized to Rei. "If there's someone else who will cooperate who has the same phenomenon occurring to them. Of course, if we can't remember the test results, or even that we're running tests…"

* * *

Being in someone's sight constantly so at least that person… didn't so much _remember _her as forgot that she was anyone that mattered a little less fast got very boring and depressing very quickly. The beach had too many memories (she'd known at the time that it was pointless to tell him that she liked him, but knowing that Shinji _didn't even remember _her feelings?), and that left the parks scattered throughout the city. The forest around the tunnel that served as NERV's back gate and emergency exit.

Since she couldn't go into the school while it was in session, that was one of the best places she could think of, to try to trigger memories of that person.

Instead, all she could think of was Shinji, and the Evas, and maybe it was some masochistic part of her that made her stop by where they'd buried the time capsule. Would the day they all got together to dig it up remain the last time he would look at her and see _her? _

The photograph of all the pilots! Maybe… No. There would have been someone else in there. If they could be forgotten so easily, if Shinji could look at that memento and not see the person he'd known much longer than he'd known her, then what chance did she have? Would someone look at that photograph someday and wonder who the blue-haired girl and the other person who wasn't in the history books were, or would it be just like the project that created her? How suddenly, no one cared that such an unprecedented project had a result? That a living weapon was just wandering around with no one who cared enough to supervise her?

It was desperation for something to do that made Rei borrow a map and hike up to the old shrine where they found the ancient Eva that started the project that night. The thinking was that maybe she could find something while the park staff was elsewhere. Normally there was a night guard, but since the park staff was really _NERV _staff, Gendo knew when their night off was.

The trail was more scenic than direct: one of the stops along the way was the hillside where they'd buried the time capsule.

Rei hurried on.

As the sun went down and the trees closed in overhead, it wasn't long before she had to turn on the flashlight Yui gave her, with a smile at Gendo for some reason. Rei wasn't someone who scared easily, but this was creepy. Alone in the woods at night, going to an abandoned shrine that really did host something supernatural (well, the start of a tunnel to the underworld)?

Violin music in the distance didn't make it any less creepy.

It took some scrambling through the underbrush to get to the clearing, but the music didn't stop as she approached.

Her disinterested emotions wanted to say 'some kid, alone in the woods, they should probably go home but other than that there's nothing to see here.'

Her mind looked at him and said 'white.' White hair. That was the most vivid thing Shinji had recalled, from what happened at the end of their battle with the angels. Whiteness, like a blank page, and maybe it wasn't just because he'd vanished into the white giant after all. Maybe it was his mind trying to hold on to _something _about his friend.

Would he, could he, remember that her hair was blue?

"I'm sorry," she said, "I don't remember your name, and all I could read was that it was something like messenger."

"That's better than most people. I'd tell you," he said, putting the instrument down next to him on the old wrought-iron bench, on top of some folded cloth, "but you'll just forget again."

"Were you waiting here for me?" she wondered, looking around the clearing. She hoped he didn't live here, but that might be bedding on the bench, and there was a tarp attached to a rope over the bench but pulled over to the side for now, ready to turn into a tent if it started to rain.

"No," he said. Why would he possibly want to do that?

"You do remember me, right?" had he forgotten her, just like she'd forgotten him? Rei hadn't realized until now how much it had reassured her that there was someone else in the same boat, someone who might still remember who she was.

"Rei Ayanami," he said. "You confessed to Shinji." On the night he'd turned down Kaworu's invitation to come perform at the municipal concert with him.

Rei had thought he was only angry with her because he didn't have the courage to confess, but it must have been adding insult to injury, wasn't it? Kaworu only had so much time with Shinji, Shinji didn't want to spend his time with Kaworu, and someone else was trying to make a mark in Shinji's heart, make their feelings known to him, when no matter what he would forget this boy's?

"You still look like you're in middle school," she found herself saying, apropos of 'that must suck,' only that wasn't how it came out.

'Thank you for reminding me,' that look said. Another reason there was no point in telling Shinji his feelings, when the human was already in college. "You've grown up. I wonder if you can even grow old?" Lucky her.

"You can't?" she asked him. He was stuck that age, too short for his feet to reach the ground, sitting on that bench?

He shook his head. "No, I can't grow up. I'm bound to Adam, and Adam is immortal. It's my purpose to speak with those who make the choice."

"The choice?"

"The choice that decides whether this world survives, or Adam makes a new one," he told her. "That's why the angels fight to reach Adam, every time they revive, but Adam will also respond to the wishes of the Lilim."

"I was made from the flesh of the Evas, so what does that make me?" she asked, because if he was the person who had told the Ikaris where to find the first Eva, the ancient body underground…

"They were made from the angel who reached Adam and created the world of the Lilim. When the angels came before, her body would respond to a child's need and fight them. This last time, however, too many of the angels were going to revive at once. They timed it that way: the last two cycles before Shinji's, _none of them _came to find me. I knew that they would only be able to resist the temptation of Adam if they were planning something. The ones who awakened early slept until all of them had revived."

"Then they attacked the city… not all at once, but…"

Kaworu nodded. "Some of them broke their word and attacked early. That makes it less likely that they'll try it again." They wouldn't be able to trust each other. "The Lilim always forgot Lilith after the battle was over, but they still remember the Evas this time, so they'll be prepared next time an angel attacks." That should have been a relief.

"So… am I connected to Lilith the way you are to Adam?" Rei wondered.

He looked up at her, red eyes widening in alarm. "Don't go to see her. Not if there's any chance she doesn't know about you. If she hasn't made you immortal, then you still have a chance to die! To get out of this, without someone making the choice to destroy and remake the world! You can free yourself! I can't, not without everyone who's alive right now dying!"

Everyone. Everyone included, "Shinji…"

"You told him you liked him," Kaworu remembered. "I was so angry, because you could afford to risk him spending less time with you, because you'd have more time with him, more time as his friend…"

"You liked him?" she suddenly knew it was true. "We're the same…" Just like Rei and Ritsuko: Rei and Kaworu both liked Shinji and he'd forgotten both of them. All the time they'd spent together. He didn't have any precious memories of them, none at all. If they saw him again, he'd look at them as though they were strangers. "So there's really no way? You don't know any way to fix this?"

The boy glared at her. "Not without replacing this world. Shinji already turned it down." And Kaworu knew that he _should _have been happy about that. "I've been doing this for a long time. The Lilim inventing writing didn't help, photographs don't do anything either… Adam doesn't want the angels to remember that I exist and they can use me to find him, and Lilim minds are far weaker than the minds of the angels. Only someone stronger than Adam could remember me after he's decided it's time for them to forget. After what happened to Lilith's body when I told the Lilim about it, he doesn't want to make an exception for the Lilim."

"How strong is Lilith?" Could she help?

He gave her a stare that looked petulant only because her mind kept looking at him and thinking 'child.' Obviously he thought the same of her. "You think she's going to _help?_ Why do you _think _everyone else but me has forgotten you? Now that her children have the Evas, Lilith was looking forward to not having to fight five times a century. That's why she let Gendo and Yui find her in the first place. I gave them directions, but they wouldn't have seen her if Lilith hadn't let them. Hopefully forgetting you is just a side effect of Lilith making them forget her. If it's not, if she wants you to take over watching the Lilim who will fight on her behalf for her…" Then Rei wasn't going to get the chance to die.

"Go away," he told her. "I'm trying to forget. I have to forget Shinji, or else, the next time I meet someone that I care about… I might do something I could never forgive myself for."

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean?" he demanded. "All I have to do is not do a good enough job convincing someone that this life is worth living, and the world will end! Ask the Ikaris what would have happened, if I'd tried a little less hard! And if I hadn't, Shinji would never have been born and I wouldn't have to feel like this!"

Then there was no-one there, nothing to see here, and Rei needed to find her way back to the path.

* * *

"I met… someone," Rei said, after she managed to talk her way past security into a meeting with the Drs. Ikari and their second-in-command. "They were the person we keep forgetting, I'm pretty sure. They said that Lilith, the original living armor the Evas are made from, is making people forget about me in order to make people forget about her. She wanted people to make the Evas, so they could defend themselves, but she doesn't want… maybe she doesn't want the other angels to know where to find her? There was… something like that."

"Other angels?" Shinji's father asked, frowning not so much at her, but at the general situation.

"The angels want Adam, the white giant, so they can create a new world. Lilith is the one that created our world. Adam appears, and someone is offered a choice. I think it was Shinji last time? But the other angels try to reach Adam too."

"So someone would have to use the living armor and fight them off…" Why did the other two look at Yui?

"I don't think so?" she said. "But I only remember running. What about you, dear?"

"I think… I wanted to choose the world with you in it. That was what I was supposed to do." It wasn't like there'd really been any other option, had there? Just like choosing Ritsuko over Yui had never been an option for Gendo Ikari. She'd never had a chance, any more than Rei had with Shinji.

"Just like what Shinji reported, of what he remembers after the white giant appeared." Fuyutsuki nodded. "The simplest explanation is that this is the white giant. Perhaps it takes human form, or at least made you think it was in human form, to communicate with us. If it doesn't want to destroy this world and create another one, and needs our assistance fighting off the other angels, that would explain most of it."

"Perhaps… But if everyone forgetting about Rei is a side effect of forgetting about the original armor," Yui said, "Perhaps they are like Rei. They were a pilot, weren't they? Someone created by Adam to fight the angels, keep them from reaching him and using his power?"

"If we're to believe that the white giant really could create another world, then creating a servant in human form would be well within its capabilities," Gendo said. "And if the angels can't remember that servant exists, then they can't prepare for whatever it can do to stop them. Or make sure to destroy it before they mount an open attack on the white giant or the mountain. We know that they're attacking the mountain because the original armor was here, and it was used to fight them."

The 'original armor,' they kept saying now. "Lilith," Rei reminded them, because even if they were going to forget, she didn't want them to forget something so important _now_, when she was hoping they might come up with some ideas. "Another angel, the one that made our world."

"That brings back the question of what exactly are the angels," Fuyutsuki said, leaning back a little. An old question, one they'd discussed unproductively on too many nights. "Similar to humans, but so is the original armor- Lilith."

"Extremely powerful and not willing to negotiate," was what it boiled down to for Gendo. "Their DNA is close to human, and if humans can do what they want to do, and use the white giant's power, then we might as well continue to call them more powerful versions of humanity. The real question is the nature of the white giant. If it needs us to protect it, perhaps it's not that much more powerful than them. Or it can only use its power to accomplish its purpose."

"Perhaps it's the angels that have adapted to capture and subdue it," Yui reminded him. "If they've tried again and again every twenty-one years, for who knows how many thousands of years?" She looked sad. "If the person who warned us has been making friends and losing them, for who knows how many thousands of years? There has to be something we can do."

"I'll go look for them again tonight," Rei promised. "Maybe I can convince them to help us brainstorm."

But she didn't find them again. No matter how many new generations of pilots she taught, body frozen at an age too old to pilot herself, she never recognized the person she'd forgotten long ago.

Even when she looked at photographs of candidates with red eyes, just like hers, and hair the white of the towering giant whose appearance heralded the next attack of the angels.

* * *

_For Rei, it would be nice to talk to someone else who still remembers her. For Kaworu? He'd have to let her get to know him again and again, during each period where people can temporarily remember him, and he'd rather spend that precious time with almost anyone else. In most continuities, Kaworu has a soft spot for Rei, even if not quite as much of one as for Shinji. In Angelic Days, she inadvertently rubbed it in his face just how much his life sucked, on a night when he'd already had one reminder of just how little time he had left._

_I was reminded that in the game this manga is allegedly based on, Kaworu says that he's bi for Rei. So that could have been a beta pairing, if the manga's author wasn't so focused on having Rei and Kaworu spend as much of their pagecount as possible angsting about how Shinji/not!Asuka were so perfect for each other. Seriously. _

_Angelic Days!Kaworu says outright at one point that the only person he's interested in spending time with is Shinji: all of them are going to forget him, he's only got a limited amount of time, and after that it'll be twenty-odd years until he can talk to someone again without having the same conversation over and over (since they won't remember that they already talked about certain things). _

_This manga's version of Kaworu is better than its complete absence of Asuka, but he's still very different from the other versions of the character, because of the different circumstances: I'm reminded of anime!Kaworu's opinion of having to live eternally after the person he cared about died._


End file.
